Going from dogshit prequel to such a bland sequel is such a nothing praise it's honestly not even funny.

Like yes it's better the visual doesn't look like they were made out of clay anymore and the movement felt "normal" this time but do i have to lower my standard for games especially Sonic games just to say "it's really good man i can't believe it!" it being better than Episode I while still have a lot of same faults or even new one(bosses take too long and zones left me displeased),could you really call that a praise?I don't know.

Sonic 4 Episode II definitely takes lesson from what was wrong with Episode I but it didn't really fix itself or gave itself even a snippets of it's identity ended up just overall product being whole lot of nothing and bland.

I guess this was marginally better than Episode 1. At least I was able to convince myself to play through it as a kid whereas I simply abandoned the other game at the same time.

The game pretty much suffers the same problem as the previous game just with controls being slightly better. It is still, however, lazy, unimaginative and trying to milk nostalgia bucks.

At least Sonic Team learnt from Valve and never released Episode 3. The series should end here and now. They ran over like 5 people on the sidewalk already with with this schloop Sonic 4 but at least they braked and didn't do a hit and run on us.

Remember ladies and gentlemen, this game has nothing to do with the classic games and you should never play it.

This one's actually better! Calling it Sonic 4 is still stupid, but hey, I had fun this time. I like how it highlights Sonic and Tails working together with the team up mechanic. (the 69 attack is cool)
It also looks much better than Episode 1, even if it still has that budgeted feel to it.

OST is once again dogshit sadly. Jun, just let it go man. Go back to your Sonic branded guitar.

I still wouldn't play this over something like Sonic 3 A.I.R or Adv1, but at least it feels like they were trying this time around.

If only they didn't name it Sonic 4, maybe people would go a little easier on it-- oh I just noticed those pillars in the back of the cover art are in the shape of a II. that's kinda cute

So I Decided to play through this on a whim since the last time I played it was on an iphone like 7 years ago and I wasn't even sure I'd finished it. I don't think I did, because this was such a bad time I wouldn't have forgotten. It convinced me to play all the Sonic that I can muster so here's the start of something:

It doesn't start off that bad. The visuals are fine enough and the first zone looks pretty nice: Castle ruins beautifully lit during both day and night. Playing through it doesn't feel right, though. The initial speed of jumping, falling, walking and homing attack are all annoyingly slow, and the animation adds to the frustration. Sonic at max velocity looks like he's stationary on top of a wheel that is too smooth. Just about everything is too smooth. These first levels are still okay, sadly all 3 have underwater segments. Famously everyone's favourite parts of these games that also happen to make the pretty backgrounds look bad for a good portion of the zone. It doesn't take too long for the worst offender of the gameplay, the special duo move, to sink in as it breaks up any and all momentum again and again. Going in and out of it plays a cutscene every single time and it gets tiring around the third. It's also very safe and spammable.

The rest of the zones don't look bad but not very good and there are no interesting twists really. The second is just a lot of snow with a one-note carnival detour, the third a desert with annoying tower climbs and the fourth a sky zone with the worst plane segment ever made. Sky Fortress act 1 is mostly an auto scroller with worse controls than back in Sonic 2 and after many repetitive screens you think it's gonna end but you're only halfway through the 6 minute slog. In my case it was about 15 because I died twice, fun times.

Bosses in 2d Sonic have always been pretty meh, but at least they were easy and mostly pretty fast. In most cases you can get in a bunch more hits than the free ones given in the obvious window between attacks. Risking a death for extra hits is rewarding and feels skilful. So let's remove that and make every boss a waiting game. Cool, thanks. Uninspired, boring, worse time wastes than the worst stages.

I rarely get nauseous playing a video game but the final level is almost unplayable. A run through rotating sci-fi bullshit where you can barely see Sonic for the spinning back and forth. I very rarely suffer from motion sickness in games but I was near throwing up going through this. The final boss is surprisingly interactive and somewhat challenging if janky. More luck based if anything when spamming the special fly move which felt most effective.

Sonic 4 Episode 2 is not solely miserable but definitely not worth your time. I don't recall episode 1, or any other (mainline) Sonic game for that matter, being this bad but we'll see.

Sonic 4 Episode 2 wraps up the saga by bringing back Metal Sonic and Little Planet from Sonic CD. Dr Eggman has managed to capture little planet inside of his Death Egg Mk 2, and plans to do… something with it. But after they are stopped Sonic and Tails escape.. and the planet is still trapped. To this day an Episode 3 never saw the light of day, and this cliffhanger was never resolved.

Well Sonic 4 Ep 2 definitely brings some improvements to the table. Firstly the presentation, this game looks gorgeous and is a much better artistic direction than Ep1. Music took a hit though which is a shame, some acts really suffer from the instruments used and just all round bad compositions.

Gameplay is better here, Sonic has more natural flow to his movements and rolling actually does naturally increase Sonic’s speed through momentum. Tails is here but you can’t play as him, instead by pressing the tag button, Sonic and Tails can team up to perform a few moves. They can fly in the air, swim underwater and perform a super Spindash to destroy anything in their path. I like this, it’s a great evolution of the classic sonic gameplay that feels totally natural and doesn’t cut the speed in half.

It’s a shame the level design is pretty poor, it starts okay with Slyvania Castle, but White Park is an incredible boring rollercoaster level and Oil Desert is everything I hated about Oil Ocean times 10. After the awful act 1, sky fortress is a decent zone, but again that’s it, 4 zones with 3 acts.

Bosses are passable, I know people hate how you have to wait to hit them, but I don’t think these bosses take that long, and are a decent challenge. I agree they could go a bit faster, but it’s not the worst thing ever.

Special stages are the halfpipe, and it’s a decent version of it, nothing special but they work. You once again get Super Sonic who is great, but he gets cancelled when you use a tag action so his effectiveness is cut in half.

This is another.. okay game, but there’s so much missed potential, like why can’t we play episode 1 levels here. There’s episode Metal where metal sonic can run through one act of each zone from ep1, but it’s over in about 15 minutes.

I don’t think this is a bad game, but again it’s just underwhelming.